Day 24 Saturday 17 June 2017

Today in Victoria we slept in till 7.15 AM and at breakfast we meet some fellow Scenic travellers, all from Queensland. This morning we visited the Parliament House of British Columbia and it was an interesting tour. Today we also retraced our steps on the ghost tour walking up Government Street which is the major street that takes you through the oldest part of the city. We visited the heavily haunted chocolate shop, the alleyway where people claim they see faces and feel like someone grabbing them, and the boy in the well.  The tour guide Zac said that last year on a tour a dad had his 12 month old girl on his shoulders and they were standing in front of the well.  The little girl was watching something moving back and forth and started to smile, giggle and then laughing. She had a very limited vocabulary but she pointed and said “Boy”.  Her father became rather pale. Spooky.

 We visited Chinatown, which is only second to San Francisco as the oldest Chinese community in North America. We also discovered the Fan Tan Alley which is the narrowest alley in North Anerica.  It featured in the Mel Gibson/Goldie Hawn film "Bird on a Wire".

And of course there are shoes...

We went to the Royal British Columbia Museum which is really well laid out with some excellent exhibits. Apparently it is a highly ranked museum for its type. It had life sized animals, including a mammoth, in realistic displays, entire street displays and excellent First Nations displays. 

There was an aboriginal festival on and here is one of the participants.

Tonight we had our welcome dinner with our new tour buddies.  They all seem very nice. We reunited with Charles and Lesley, a couple from Newcastle who were on our last tour who are a lovely couple.